Our resident Puzzlemaster and Humorist, Raymond, has more funny things to tell us. On a mostly daily basis, he will post a puzzle, joke or anecdote that will surely bring a smile or laugh to everyone. Here is the first one.
Enjoy!

(and feel free to comment if you like)

I love the story of Anton Rubinstein, who had a fabulous technique,
but was extremely careless in his concerts, hitting enormous numbers of
wrong notes. Nevertheless, his playing had so much fire and
imagination, that his audiences loved it, despite the wrong notes.
After one concert, Letchetitsky said to him :" You must really have a
fabulous technique to be able to mess up the last movement that way!"

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

The nineteenth singer Nelie Melba had an absolutely perfect voice,
but her singing was quite uninspired. The music critic Ernest Newman
described her voice as" uninterestingly perfect, and perfectly
uninteresting".

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

About the music of Richard Wagner, Mark Twain said:' It's probably
not as bad as it sounds."

Speaking of Richard Wagner, I once saw a play in which the whole
scene took place in Hell. The visitor was very surprised when the Devil
told him that Wagner was in Hell. "Of course," said the Devil, "he was
a vicious anti-semite! " "Oh," said the visitor, "but he wrote such
beautiful music ! " "Ah", replied the Devil, "his music went to Heaven.
HE went to Hell."

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

My favorite Twain story is the one in which he gave a presentation
in a hick town in Vermont. He got absolutely no reaction to his
humorous bits; nobody cracked a smile; they were all deadpan. Twain
wondered: " Am I losing my touch?" Well, during the intermission he
heard an elderly couple discussing his act. The husband said to the
wife: "Weren't he funny? Weren't he funny? You know, at times I could
hardly keep from laughing! "

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

Speaking of Vermont, the essence of Vermont jokes is that when you
ask a Vermonter a question, the answer he gives is correct, but highly
insufficient. For example, a Vermont farmer went to a neighbor farmer
and asked:"Lem, what did you give your horse that time it had the
colic? " Lem answered : " Bran and molasses." The farmer returned a
week later and said: "Lem, I gave my horse bran and molasses and it
died." Lem replied: "So did mine."

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

Speaking of Vermont, the essence of Vermont jokes is that when you ask a Vermonter a question, the answer he gives is correct, but highly insufficient. For example, a Vermont farmer went to a neighbor farmer and asked:"Lem, what did you give your horse that time it had the colic? " Lem answered : " Bran and molasses." The farmer returned a week later and said: "Lem, I gave my horse bran and molasses and it died." Lem replied: "So did mine."

I love this one - despite it being rather gruesome from the horse's point of view

Speaking of Vermont, the essence of Vermont jokes is that when you ask a Vermonter a question, the answer he gives is correct, but highly insufficient. For example, a Vermont farmer went to a neighbor farmer and asked:"Lem, what did you give your horse that time it had the colic? " Lem answered : " Bran and molasses." The farmer returned a week later and said: "Lem, I gave my horse bran and molasses and it died." Lem replied: "So did mine."

A tourist was traveling through Vermont and he came to a fork in
the road and both signs said the same thing: TO WHITE RIVER JUNCTION.
He spied a native Vermonter standing in the intersection and asked him:
"Does it make any difference which road I take?" The Vermonter
replied : " Not to me it doesn't. "

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

Actually, many Vermonters have a keen, though wry sense of humor: A
student once told me that he drove past a farm house in Vermont and saw
a farmer rocking on a rocking chair on the porch. Being in a mischievous
mood, he said to the farmer: " Been rocking that way all your life?"
The farmer replied: " Not yet."

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

The former president Calvin Coolidge was a Vermonter, and there are
many jokes about him. He was known to speak very little, and was
called: " Silent Cal". Here are three jokes about him:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) He was once at a banquet sitting next to a young lady, and was
silent for half an hour. Finally she turned to him and said: " Mister
President, I have a bet that I can get more than two words out of you!
" He replied: " You lose!" [Pretty clever, huh?]

(2) One Sunday he came home from church and his neighbor asked him
what the preacher had been talking about. Coolidge replied: " Sin" The
neighbor asked: " What did he have to say abut it? "
Coolidge replied: " He was against it."

Before telling you the next Coolidge joke, I must tell
you of an incident I read about him that increased my respect for him
enormously: He came into his office one day and found a burglar going
through his belongings. When confronted, the burglar broke down in
tears and said that he desperately
needed to find money to get to his dying mother in another state.
Coolidge reached in his pocket, took out some money which he gave to
him and said: " Pay me back as soon as you can, and be careful the way
you get out of here, as the building is heavily guarded."

(3) Coolidge once visited a farm with some friends. They saw some sheep
and one of the friends said:
" I see these sheep have just been shorn" Coolidge replied : " Looks
like it from this side."

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

The last joke reminds me of the story of a physicist and a
mathematician who flew from the West coast to the East coast and each
was asked to record any observations they made on the way. They saw a
black sheep in Kansas, and the physicist wrote : " There is a black
sheep in Kansas." The mathematician wrote : " There exists-- somewhere
in the Midwest --a sheep--black on top."

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

Do You know the difference between a physicist and a mathematician?
Well, the following test will tell which type one is: We have a cabin
in the woods with an unlighted gas stove, an empty pot and a faucet
with cold running water. What steps would you take to get a pot of hot
water? Just about everyone answers that they would first pour cold
water from the faucet into the pot, then light the stove and then put
the pot on the stove. Well, so far, mathematicians and physicists are
in agreement, but now comes the crucial test: This time the conditions
are the same as before, except that now you have a pot already filled
with cold water. How would you now get a pot of hot water? The usual
reply is to put the pot of cold water on the stove and then light the
stove. Well, this is the response of one who has the temperament of a
physicist. A mathematician would dump out the water from the pot,
reducing the problem to the previous case, which has already been
solved.

A more dramatic version of the test is this: We are given a building
on fire, a hose and a hydrant. How would you put out the fire? Obviously,
one would seem to connect the hose to the hydrant, turn on the water
and the put out the fire. Now suppose the conditions are the same as
before, only now the building is not on fire. How should you now put out
the fire? The physicist would do nothing, whereas the mathematician
would set the building on fire, reducing the problem to the previous
case, which has already been solved.

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

Do you know the difference between a mathematician, a physicist and an engineer? Well, there were three such professors who had adjacent offices at a university. One day they had lunch together and came back to their offices, they all took out their pipes and started smoking. Then they each dumped their hot ashes in their wastebaskets, which contained paper, and each one caught fire. The engineer took out his slide rule and computed approximately how much water was necessary to quench the fire, took approximately that amount and put the fire out. The physicist computed the upper and lower limits that were necessary, took the average, and put the fire out. The mathematician, using far more refined and sophisticated techniques, computed EXACTLY how much water was necessary, and went back to work.

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

There are 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand ternary, those who don't, and those who mistake it for binary...

This is what I get for spending highschool on the math team...

And a riddle:

Why did the chicken cross the mobius strip???

_________________"This is death! This is death as this emanation of the female which leads to unification ... death and love ... this is the abyss." This is not music", said [Sabaneev] to him, "this is something else..." - "This is the Mysterium," he said softly.

_________________"This is death! This is death as this emanation of the female which leads to unification ... death and love ... this is the abyss." This is not music", said [Sabaneev] to him, "this is something else..." - "This is the Mysterium," he said softly.

Several people were lost in a canyon. They decided to test the echo, and shouted: WE ARE LOST! A few minutes later a sound came back: YOU ARE LOST! They realized that of course it was no echo, and one of them said that it must have been a mathematician. When asked why, he replied: “For three reasons. First, he took a long time answering. Second, what he said was perfectly accurate. And third, totally useless!

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

The following story is true: The great nineteenth century mathematician Felix Klein was once at a party in which people were discussing the correlation between mathematics and music--both interests and aptitudes. Klein looked more and more puzzled, and finally said :
"But I don’t understand, gentlemen, mathematics is beautiful" !

(um...another one that went over my head )

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

Here is a riddle for you: A little girl said to her mother: " Let's go to the railroad station and meet Daddy, and the four of us will come home to dinner." The question is: why did she say FOUR instead of THREE? [I'll give you the answer in the next entry.]

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

Here is a riddle for you: A little girl said to her mother: " Let's go to the railroad station and meet Daddy, and the four of us will come home to dinner." The question is: why did she say FOUR instead of THREE? [I'll give you the answer in the next entry.]

Because her little brother was coming along too, as is only common sense.

First, the word ERRERS was mis-spelled. Secondly, the word MESSEGE was mis -spelled. Thirdly, there were only two errors, not three, hence the word THREE should have been TWO .

But doesn't this raise a paradox? If the word THREE was an error, then there were really three errors after all, which makes the word THREE correct! So was that word an error or wasn't it? I don't know the answer to this!

NEW TODAY

The last entry calls to mind how I (Raymond Smullyan) got interested in logic: It happened when I was six years old. I was in bed with a cold, or something, on April 1, my brother Emile--10 years older than me-- came to my bedside in the morning and said : " Today I am going to fool you like you have never been fooled before! " And so I waited all day long for him to fool me, but he didn't! When bed time came, my mother and brother came into my room and my mother asked me why I didn't go to sleep. I said : " I'm waiting for Emile to fool me." My mother turned to him and said : " Why don't you fool the child?" The following conversation then ensued:

Well, I lay in bed for quite a while wondering whether I was really fooled or not! The problem is this: If I was fooled, then I DID get what I expected, in which case, in what sense was I fooled? On the other hand, if I was not fooled, then I didn't get what I expected, which means that I was fooled! And so either way you get a contradiction!

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

First, the word ERRERS was mis-spelled. Secondly, the word MESSEGE was mis -spelled. Thirdly, there were only two errors, not three, hence the word THREE should have been TWO .

But doesn't this raise a paradox? If the word THREE was an error, then there were really three errors after all, which makes the word THREE correct! So was that word an error or wasn't it? I don't know the answer to this!

Nice paradox. I did not quite see it when posting the 'solution', but I did smell something was 'wrong' here. The trick played on us is that different kinds of errors are mixed up. There are things that are always wrong, like spelling errors, and things that can be wrong or right depending on the context. By mixing them without defining the error context you can probably create an endless variety of paradoxes.

But everything I say is a lie anyway... which is of course not true now. Or is it ?

Paradoxes are interesting things. The following paradox was invented by Bertrand Russell : A certain male barber shaved all and only those men in his town who didn't shave themselves. In other words, he shaved every man who didn't shave himself, but never shaved anyone who shaved himself. The question is this: Did the barber shave himself or didn't he? Well, suppose he shaved himself. Then he is one of the men who shaved himself, but he never shaved such a man, hence this is impossible! On the other hand, suppose he didn't shave himself. Then he is one of the men who didn't shave himself, but he must shave every such man! Thus we get a contradiction either way! What is the way out?
Answer will be given in the next posting.

_________________"Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties." ~ Frederic Chopin

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